


home for christmas.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bobby in a Wheelchair, Christmas, Fluff, M/M, SPN Holiday Mixtape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9081940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: They walk out to the the woods by the creek that edges up to the end of the property, looking for the right kind of tree.  Something evergreen.  The trees are mostly cottonwood, but there’s some juniper and spruce back here too; it all sings Home, home, to him the way no other place can.  The cold air stings his bare hands, but really he’s hot, just burning up, he’s thinking about Thanksgiving again, about driving Sam and Cas back to the house and leaving Sam sitting alone in the kitchen and following Cas down to this same small woods, down to this same small creek.  He’s thinking about branches cracking under their boots and Cas’s old Carhartt jacket, the one he always leaves behind in Bobby’s front closet whenever he leaves, he’s thinking about that old jacket on the cold hard ground underneath them.





	

Dean’s in the shed behind the garage when Cas comes home.  

He’s been working on the new ramps for the porch since lunch and time’s just slipped away somehow; now the late afternoon light is slanting through the high, dusty window that runs straight across the side of Bobby’s workshop.  Dean stops what he’s doing and just listens.  He’s hearing an engine cutting off, a door opening.  Sam’s heavy boots on the porch, the third step down squeaking.  And Cas’s deep rumbling voice, going straight under his skin and to his very bones.  These are the sounds of home, to him; they’ve been that for him since the day his father unloaded their bags on Bobby’s porch and drove away one last time.  

Dean’s been rolling a nail between his thumb and his forefinger. He closes his hand around it and presses it tight against his palm.  Something’s been missing around this place for months now, and Dean is starting to think he knows what it is.  Now he’s hearing Cas’s voice again and the sound of it carrying across the junkyard and into his ears is calling to him: _Home, home._

When Dean opens his hand, there are t-shaped lines in his palm.  He sets the nail down carefully on the edge of Bobby’s workbench. He should have been there to meet Cas.  Should have been waiting on porch or something, ready to rush down the stairs as soon as he heard the rumble of tires on gravel . Now he’s feeling like he’s out of time.  He’s not ready.  But he’s  hearing Cas’s voice, Sam’s voice, both are calling out for him, and Dean has to go.

* * *

Dean takes his time getting back to the house.  He’s starting to wish he’d showered, or something.  Shaved, maybe.  Put on a clean shirt.  He’s still wishing he’d gotten to Cas first.  Cas is standing by his old Continental.  Sam’s unloading his bags out of the trunk.  

“Hey,” says Dean.

“Hey,“ Cas says back.  Cas is smiling, a little.  The shadows under his eyes look so dark.  He must have driven all night to get here on time.

“You made it,” Dean says.  He feels so stupid.  He should’ve known things between them would be strange, now.  All Dean wants to do is run over to him, snatch him up close and feel Cas’s shoulder under his chin and Cas’s hair against his ear and Cas’s back warm against his hands,he just wants to hold Cas close until he can feel Cas’s heart beating hard against his own and count of the rhythm: _He’s home, he’s home._  That’s all he wants.  But maybe he’s not allowed  .    

“Dean, help me get his stuff in,” Sam is saying, so Dean willingly trudges to the trunk and hauls out a duffle and a small leather case.  

Cas is looking up at the porch.  It’s not the same as when he’d left last time.  Now there’s a folded-up wheelchair on the porch, fresh out of the box, just waiting for those ramps.  Dean’s got to finish them soon, that’ll let them get Bobby out of the house a little more.  Make it easier.  Maybe it’ll give Bobby some motivation, too, get him to start working a little harder at PT   “Where’s Bobby?” Cas is asking.

“In the library,” Sam is telling him, “there’s not a lot of places he can go right now.”

Cas has that look on his face.  Dean doesn’t know what it is, he never has.  But he’s seen it before.  Like the day Cas showed up, he’d worn this look on his face then.  He’d kept it on for two weeks after.  “Do you think-” Cas begins, but Dean cuts him off.  

“He’ll want to see you,” he says, “he’s been waiting since Thanksgiving for you to come back home.”  And then the sharp lines of Cas’s face break out into something almost like a smile.  

* * *

 

Dean takes Cas’s things straight upstairs to his old room, the one that’s been his since he’d shown up at Bobby’s door with an almost-empty pillowcase and those shadows under his eyes.  Sam and Dean have taken up space all over the house, switched it up every few years; they’ve bunked together and alone, traded bedrooms just for fun, camped out on the library couches for weeks at a time just for fun.  There was a summer Sam had carved out his own space in the loft of the old barn, he’d hidden away for months, listening to music on his Dean’s old Walkman and shouting at visitors to go away no matter who it was.  But Cas has always kept this room, never wanted a change, not even wanting to share a room with Dean.

They’ve been using Cas’s room for storage since the accident.  Sam had moved the old walnut bed and dresser from Bobby’s room in here right after they brought Bobby home, to make room for the hospital bed.  The headboard and mattress are leaning against the wall with the window, the dresser’s crammed in front of the closet door.  Dean’s feeling bad about it, now.  They should’ve fixed Cas’s room up somehow.  Put fresh sheets on the bed.  Given the room a new coat of paint.  Well, shit.  It’s not like they’ve had time for housekeeping lately.  

Sam’s already left a pile of luggage on Cas’s old sagging mattress.  Dean sets Cas’s bags on his bed.  He never spends much time in this room when Cas is away, even though sometimes he wants to, even though sometimes there’s a need like an aching in his heart that makes him crave this space.  He’s felt it on nights that follow the hardest days, when Bobby won’t eat, won’t speak, won’t even look at them, when turning him over and changing the sheets and wiping the food off the side of his mouth is just too much.  Too hard.   Sometimes then, the only thing Dean wants is to be here in this room, curled up in Cas’s bed, watching the sun go down through Cas’s western window.  But without Cas, this room loses its magic.  

He’s heading downstairs and he’s hearing Cas’s voice, Bobby’s voice carrying across from the library.  Dean stops in front of the library door, almost waits there for Cas to come out just so they’ll get a minute alone, he just wants a minute, just to make sure that - but Dean thinks they might be talking about him.  So he keeps going, moving through this old home.

* * *

Sam’s in the kitchen.  He’s got flour clinging to the front of his ratty old denim jacket and caught in the ends of his floppy hair.  He’s grinning from ear to ear.  

“You look happy,” Dean tells him.

“I’m glad he’s home,” Sam just says.  Sometimes Dean forgets Sam misses Cas too.  Dean always thinks of that aching spot in his chest as something that’s separate from Sam, separate from their small makeshift family.  This ache is Dean’s alone.

Dean watches Sam’s work rough hands moving across the countertop, folding buttermilk into the flour and working it into a smooth ball of dough.  Sam’s been cooking dinner for the past three weeks now, he hasn’t even complained once.  Dean thinks Sam thinks he’s not pulling his weight.  But Dean can see it all over Sam’s face, how his face gets closed off and still when Dean needs his help to lift Bobby into bed or to help him change the pads on Bobby’s bed.  So Dean tries his best to not need Sam’s help.  And Sam hangs out in the kitchen, making buttermilk biscuits just the way Karen had taught him, several lifetimes ago.

“He looks good,” Sam says.  “Don’t you think? I mean Cas.  Better than last time, anyway. Think he’s found them yet, his brothers?  He hasn’t said.”

Cas does look good.  Dean thinks Cas always looks good.  But Dean’s thinking of those dark shadows under Cas’s eyes.  “He looks worried.”

Sam’s hands go still.  “Everybody’s worried, Dean.”

“I know.”

“This might be the last-”

“I know.”

“This is shit,” Sam mumbles down at his unmoving hands.  “This is such shit.”  Dean thinks he knows exactly what Sam means.  This is home.  This isn’t a place where bad things are supposed to happen.  This is supposed to be their one safe haven, all of them, away from broken bottles and belts, a place that has nothing to do with screams in the night and waking up in an Impala going ninety five down the interstate to some new hell.

Dean says, “At least we’re all here.  We’ll be here together this year.”  We’re all home, he tells himself.  Even though it doesn’t feel like it at all.

* * *

 He wants to get Cas alone, in a desperate kind of way.  

Dean’s waiting for his chance, but it never comes.  He’s sitting at the kitchen table and Cas has his chair pulled so close he can feel Cas’s shoulder brushing up against his, but Sam is leaning against the counter in his flour-covered jeans and his flour-dusted workboots, looking like he’s just back in from a blizzard, talking Cas’s ear off, and Cas’s hands are wrapped around the mug of hot chocolate and whiskey Dean had given him straightaway and Dean can’t stop looking at his hands, his hands, those old familiar hands.  He’s seen those hands bruised and bloody nailing shingles on the roof in the hot South Dakota noonday sun, he’s seen them chapped and red and wrapped around the old shovel on the back porch, digging them out of three feet of snow.  He saw them last only a few weeks ago at Thanksgiving, in the hospital, when all Bobby could do was wrap his hand around Cas’s so tight.  Dean remembers watching Bobby rubbing his thumb up and down Cas’s thumbnail, over and over.  Like he couldn’t figure out what he was touching.

Sam is saying, “The new chair won’t be delivered until January-something.  He’s got PT twice a week.”

“I’m almost done with the ramps,” Dean says.  “We could go ahead and set them up.”

“So what are we gonna do now?” Sam asks.  He sounds just like a little kid again.

“Now, we have Christmas,” Dean says.  He can feel Cas’s shoulder nudging his, just a little.  It fills him up just a little, in that spot that’s been aching since Cas took off.  “Best we can do.”

* * *

 

They walk out to the the woods by the creek that edges up to the end of the property, looking for the right kind of tree.  Something evergreen.  The trees are mostly cottonwood, but there’s some juniper and spruce back here too; it all sings _Home, home,_ to him the way no other place can.  The cold air stings his bare hands, but really he’s hot, just burning up, he’s thinking about Thanksgiving again, about driving Sam and Cas back to the house and leaving Sam sitting alone in the kitchen and following Cas down to this same small woods, down to this same small creek.  He’s thinking about branches cracking under their boots and Cas’s old Carhartt jacket, the one he always leaves behind in Bobby’s front closet whenever he leaves, he’s thinking about that old jacket on the cold hard ground underneath them. He’s thinking about Cas’s hands on his forearms, pushing up his sleeves and kissing his wrists.  He’s thinking about whispering into the crook of Cas’s neck, _Don’t go, oh please don’t, I need you here, oh please._  He’s thinking about Cas’s voice, quiet against his ear, answering, _I’ll always be back,  I’ll always come back to you, just a few weeks and I’ll be back in time for Christmas-_ -

Well.  Here they are, now.  

Sam picks out a sorry-looking spruce, a real Charlie Brown tree, the only kind of tree that’s really suitable for this kind of year, and Cas drops the axe he’s been carrying against his shoulder and starts to chop.  They drag the tree back to the house;  Dean and Sam haul it up the porch stairs and just drop it.  They sag against the porch railing, panting, and Cas has that almost-smile on his face.  

“Now what?” Sam gasps.  

“Did you find the boxes?” Cas asks.  “The Christmas ones with Karen’s ornaments and the tinsel and the tree stand.”  

Dean and Sam look at each other.  It’s been doctors and waiting rooms and hospital vending machines for months now.  Nobody had thought of stuff like that, like decorating for Christmas.  No one of them have really bothered with holiday stuff since Karen passed anyways.

“I’ll go check the basement,” Cas says.

“I’ll come too,” Dean says.  Cas catches his eye, and it's just like it's always been between them, and suddenly Dean can’t stop smiling.  It’s the stupidest thing.  This is the stupidest thing ever, this Christmas with nothing in the kitchen except buttermilk biscuits and tinned ham, this Christmas with no presents and no lights hanging on the gables and eaves and Bobby on the couch with legs that don’t work right anymore.  It’s so stupid.  But Cas said he’d be home.  And here he is now.  And there’s nothing that Dean feels but blessed, stupid relief.  This is all he's wanted, Cas home and smiling at him like there's a secret that only the two of them know.  There's nothing else like that feeling.  And Dean's thinking,  _Home, home_.   _This is it, right here.  Wherever he is, that is my home._

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be home for Christmas -  
> you can count on me.


End file.
